TV Turnoff

This last week was national TV Turnoff week, and I, being such a good citizen willingly observed it (by willingly, I mean it was assigned, and by observed I mean, I did it pretty much all the way through with only 1 exception) What fallows is my write up on how TV turnoff week changed my life:


TV turnoff week was not so much as assignment for me, as an excuse to give myself a little more time. I don’t usually watch TV all that much, just 24 on Mondays and some science channel thrown in there every now and again. The largest amount of my free time is spent on the web, a place where I tend to go, even when I'm sick of it because I don’t feel like doing anything else. The great thing about TV turnoff week was that it forced me to step back from my internet connection and work on some things that I probably wouldn’t have worked on nearly as much as if I had all of my conventional means of media consumption open to me.

The hardest part of the whole project was trying to get my sister to shut it off as well. However, she is more addicted to watching Dr. Phil than I am 24. My parents also weren’t all that supportive (though they watch the least TV out of all of us) so I ended up spending almost as much time in front of my computer as I normally do. Only instead of surfing the web, I was watching the iTunes visualizations and working on my capstone project and commercial.

It was also difficult not to post on my blog (as I already post far too rarely), or go and read the blogs of my fellow friends, one of which has taken a year off to go to high school in Washington. These, along with my RSS news feeds, are feeling quite lonely right about now, sitting in my favorites menu waiting to be clicked.

This was a worthy sacrifice though. The results of the extra time included a much-needed redirection of recourses to the search for the rest of my life (college research), a completed capstone projects and our movie trailer’s storyboard revamp.

When everything was said and done, TV turnoff week was quite successful and not hard for me at all. As a matter of fact, it seemed surprisingly easy. By the end, I was able to convince my parents that we should set aside such a time one day a week, though, I doubt any of us will remember or have any inclination to do it by the time that day should roll around.